At least some known industrial turbines, such as gas and/or steam turbines, include an inner turbine casing that is positioned within an outer turbine casing. The inner and outer turbine casings may be split along a horizontal mid-plane such that both the inner and outer turbine casings include an upper half and a lower half, thus allowing for installation and/or removal of a rotor assembly. The inner turbine casing typically surrounds one or more stages of rotatable blades of the rotor assembly and may at least partially define a working fluid flow path through the turbine.
The ability to vertically align the inner turbine casing relative to the outer turbine casing during assembly and/or maintenance of the turbine may be beneficial. For example, clearance gaps that are formed between a tip portion of each of the rotatable blades and an inner surface of the inner turbine casing may be adjusted so as to prevent or reduce leakage of the working fluid through the gaps, thus increasing operating efficiency of the turbine and reducing engine to engine variation. However, adjusting and/or aligning the vertical position of the inner turbine casing with respect to the outer turbine casing during assembly and/or maintenance procedures, particularly when the outer turbine casing is fully assembled around the inner turbine casing, may be time-consuming, difficult, and expensive.
Conventionally, the outer turbine casing must be disassembled in order to gain access to an adjustment system in order to vertically align the inner turbine casing with respect to the outer turbine casing which may result in increased outage and/or assembly time. Therefore, a support assembly which allows for vertical adjustment of the inner turbine casing in situ without removing the outer turbine casing and/or the upper half of the outer turbine casing would be useful.